Subject: Re: [PATCH iwl-net v1 2/2] ice: use NETIF_F_HW_CSUM instead of IP/IPV6

From: Simon Horman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:29:49 +0100

From: 'Simon Horman' <[email-masked]>

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---
ice: use NETIF_F_HW_CSUM instead of IP/IPV6

This commit replaces the IP and IPV6 checksum offload flags with HW_CSUM
in the ice driver to allow hardware checksumming for IPv6 packets with
extension headers. It also removes the mutual exclusivity check between
TSO and GCS.

> diff --git a/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_main.c b/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_main.c
> index 5f92377d4dfc..33f252a6a22f 100644
> --- a/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_main.c
> +++ b/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_main.c
> @@ -3491,9 +3491,8 @@ void ice_set_netdev_features(struct net_device *netdev)
>  			NETIF_F_RXHASH;
>  
>  	csumo_features = NETIF_F_RXCSUM	  |
> -			 NETIF_F_IP_CSUM  |
>  			 NETIF_F_SCTP_CRC |
> -			 NETIF_F_IPV6_CSUM;
> +			 NETIF_F_HW_CSUM;

By advertising NETIF_F_HW_CSUM, the network stack assumes the driver can handle
checksums for any protocol and passes non-IP packets (e.g., from AF_PACKET
injected frames) to the driver with CHECKSUM_PARTIAL.

Since ice_tx_csum() strictly parses the L3 header and expects IPv4 or IPv6,
returning -1 for other protocols, will this regression cause non-IP packets to
be silently dropped instead of falling back to software checksums in the kernel?

Additionally, skb_csum_hwoffload_help() relies on NETIF_F_IPV6_CSUM to
safely fall back to software checksums when IPv6 extension headers are
present.

Does using NETIF_F_HW_CSUM bypass this safeguard, potentially causing
legacy hardware (like E810) or E830 without GCS descriptors to compute
incorrect pseudo-headers and silently corrupt IPv6 packets with extension
headers?

Finally, for protocols other than TCP, UDP, or SCTP, the driver falls back to
calling skb_checksum_help(skb) in the default case of ice_tx_csum().

However, the driver appears to ignore the return value of skb_checksum_help().

If skb_checksum_help() fails (e.g., due to -ENOMEM during pskb_expand_head()),
could this result in the packet being transmitted with an uncomputed checksum?